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Monday, May 16, 2011

Let There Be Light

In the beginning I took poor lit pictures, dark and unprofessional. Not anymore, I was shown the way and followed the light.

Thanks to this post from Lily Pad Cards I was shown how to make a great light box for next to nothing. My hubby being the photography major, coupled with his knack for making cool stuff got right on the case.

The down sides to the light box suggested is your "stuck" with using it one specific way. I mean it isn't open for change in colors, special effects that sort of thing. Since I have yet to figure out what I want and the fact I don't have a craft station as the original design shows we had to alter it some. (I was given a desk by that I mean my husband granted me permission to join him in his fortress of solitude.) Here is the light station we created. By we, I mean my hubby did while I was sleeping.

First... use what you have, don't go out and buy a box if you already have one, same with the other items if you have something that will work just as well use that. We happened to have a 12x12x12 ish box for eggs, I believe it was picked it up on one of Dk's crazy marketing adventures. (I should do a blog post about that LOL.) Vellum is also something we had on hand but tulle would work, tissue paper, a sheer curtain even. Just keep in mind that the lights get extremely hot, fire isn't what you want in your paper crafting work space. Be creative.. but be careful.

The lights were purchased from Wal-Mart as the post suggested. Btw they were $8 not $5, the joys of living in so cal. White poster board ($1) and natural light bulbs also made the list of purchases. Not too sure what watt of light bulb to get we picked up both 60 and 75 watt. They were just under $4 each. The lights can handle as much as 100 watts, we are debating on trying those...we'll see.

We played a bit and using the 75 watt bulbs took the photo from a previous post, tweaked it some in Photoshop and I went to bed. :D When I awoke this is what I found:

Essentially it is just 2 sides of a box, forming a 90 degree angle. We started with a sturdy box so keep that mind. Remember it doesn't have to look super pretty no one's gonna see it. You could paint it or bling it up afterwards, if you that's important to you. Dk cut the poster board to size and clipped it on with alligator clips as shown:

Initially I picked Dk's brain to so I could give ya'll better instructions.. however that didn't work. You see he's a wealth of knowledge and I am a visual person to the extreme so we agreed he'll make a post explaining how to make the light station. The first photo we had taken didn't have any filters however during the night Dk added some acrylic to make a filter. (It was left over from his 1st major the second time he went back to school :D)

What I like about this is we can change filter colors, poke holes do all sorts of stuff to give what I'm photographing a nice effect. We're still tweaking things here and there, making it work better for our needs. Like everything it's a work in progress. I'll keep you posted with any major changes.